


sins of the father

by nanasalt



Category: Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: Character Study, It's been a while since I posted angst, It's glenya-flavored but Anya is as ever an enigma, Post-Canon, Religious Themes, Though not particularly deep, character musings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:27:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23830822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nanasalt/pseuds/nanasalt
Summary: Sometimes, caught in the limbo between staying awake and forgetting, Gleb whispers his half-forgotten prayers. He cannot recall which sins he is asking forgiveness for; there are too many to name his greatest. He tries anyway, because perhaps the identification will lend some absolution.The thought tastes like a lie. He is fast growing accustomed to ignoring such things.
Relationships: Anya | Anastasia Romanov/Gleb Vaganov
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21





	sins of the father

**Author's Note:**

> By 1927, Deputy Commissioner Vaganov would swear up and down that he was an atheist. It's what the state demanded. But he didn't grow up in the world of 1927, and there's bits that leak through.

Sometimes, caught in the limbo between staying awake and forgetting, Gleb whispers his half-forgotten prayers. He cannot recall which sins he is asking forgiveness for; there are too many to name his greatest. He tries anyway, because perhaps the identification will lend some absolution.

The thought tastes like a lie. He is fast growing accustomed to ignoring such things.

Maybe his sin was helping, was letting his heart rule his mind and reaching out to the frightened woman. It seemed reasonable enough at the time; she had been frightened and he had been able to help. If her gaze felt like a knife-wound on his heart, it was no fault of hers, and perhaps no fault of his, but it’s simpler to blame himself.

Maybe it was trying a second time and leaving her with a warning instead of wounds. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, after all, and his warning had been well-intentioned and equally well-ignored. He hadn’t realized how ignored until he was standing in the hastily abandoned Yusupov Palace, and it's easier - again - to blame himself.

Maybe his sin, then, is putting the pistol into his pocket and boarding the train, and not pulling it quickly enough when he sees her again. Maybe his sin is clinging to hope that she isn’t the princess despite the ever-mounting evidence to the contrary. He has always been an optimist, has always counted it among his better traits, but perhaps this time it was insanity to hope they might be anything but enemies.

Optimism is quick to die in the new Russia, but Gleb saw his own hope mirrored in Anya's fierce determination and couldn't bring himself to stamp either out completely.

Maybe his sin is in not putting a bullet between her blue eyes the moment he recognized them, when he shook her hand in his office and let her go. She slipped through his grasp and he let her, because his deeper sin is wanting her to be anything but the princess with a sick, corroding hope.

If Anya isn't Anastasia, she can live.

If Anya isn’t Anastasia, he won’t have to face himself.

If Anya isn’t Anastasia, he won’t have to answer the question that has haunted him since he heard the silence blossom across Yekaterinburg, erasing the echo but never the memory of the violence. If the orders had been his and not his father’s, if he had carried the pistol and the uniform, if he had been sent into that basement, _if --_ could he have forgotten the children were not so much older than him, forgotten they were all only there because of their father?

Little boys grow up at their father’s knees, but little girls do the same. Neither learn to condemn their fathers when they should, no matter which uniform he wears.

Nicholas Romanov and Stepan Vaganov were soldiers on opposing sides but they died at the same hand, the same pistol aimed at their temple, one following the other in a chain that hadn’t quite ended the war but left scars for the still-living. Despite the bloodshed and history, Gleb couldn’t look at Nicholas’s maybe-daughter and see another enemy to be put down. Army service left gunpowder ground into his skin and panic laced through his veins and Anya's past left her the same gifts, but she refused to be ruled by either.

Maybe his sin was knowing all that and still holding a pistol muzzle snug to her throat, even knowing how hollow the threat truly was. Anya watched him with steely blue eyes and seemed to know he would fail. How could she not, when they were imperfect soldiers in a battle that should have ended when they were simply two children carrying their father’s determination in their bones.

Maybe Gleb's sin is dredging up their memories and nightmares and horrors no one else could understand, simply so he can say he tried. He can say he held her at gunpoint and demanded she renounce herself, say he did his best, but Gleb recalls his father’s hollow-eyed smile when he came home and the way the pistol had slipped from his numb fingers, how he had nearly collapsed when he whispered _It’s done_.

Gleb must be able to say he tried before he left Anya alone and did not demand anything more, because he remembers the hollowness of his father's eyes. He must try, before he is made into propaganda in stories or at gunpoint as his father was.

Maybe his sin is demanding she remain the woman she’s grown into in a decade of learning and being and trying rather than the one who was shot and laid to rest with the old Russia. He can only pray, in words he has forgotten to a God he has long since set aside, that all his sins are less than the alternative.

His sins, myriad as they are, cannot outweigh the threat of fitting Anya into the too-small skin and ice-blue eyes he watched walk into that basement. He did nothing for either side of the war that was waged in that small concrete room, merely bore witness instead, and he does not know if he could have acted if they had asked. Wars make men out of boys and nobodies out of princesses, so maybe his sin was trying to keep her small, palatable, Anya instead of a woman who could - who _would_ \- be shot for naming herself. They both knew the truth, and he begged her to lie.

Maybe his sin was asking Anya to her to remain the woman he would love, if revolution and loyalties allowed. They do not, and his heart feels like it will choke him anyway.

But then again, maybe his greatest sin was that he failed in all of it.

She named herself Anastasia and did not flinch back like he did. She did not look away and would not let him look away either.

Maybe his sin was holding the gun to her throat and being unable to pull the trigger, despite the orders from his officers, despite the orders from Anastasia herself. Maybe it was his trembling hands and clenched teeth and visceral fear for the memories he had and the future that stretched on before him, one where he found the trigger and pulled it.

He never could, of course.

Maybe his sin was knowing that he would have achieved all his old dreams by pulling the trigger, and killed so many new ones in the same motion. There are a million and one dreams in Gleb Vaganov, dreams sparked by blue eyes and sharp defiance, dreams of normalcy and kindness and love. If he had acted - if he had pulled the trigger - the dreams would have died with her, and Gleb would not have survived it because he could not survive a world without Anya in it.

Perhaps his sin was loving her so fiercely, loving her more than father or country or all the pieces he had carefully shaped into Deputy Commissioner Gleb Vaganov even when they were rough and did not fit the outline correctly.

Maybe his sin was leaving her without the knowledge of what he would return to. It was vanity to think she might care, that she might act if he told her she held his fate in her hands. He was unable to know which he feared more: that she might try and save him, or that she might not.

Maybe his sin was looking into her eyes, a million and one dreams dying inside him, and saying nothing. He took her hand, and for a moment they lived in a fairy tale where a deputy commissioner and a grand duchess were equal at long last. So much blood had been spilled for that dream, after all, and perhaps she even believed it too.

Maybe his sin was wishing her well and meaning it. Maybe it was calling a princess 'comrade'. Maybe it was leaving.

Though it’s none of his business, maybe it’s _her_ sin that she shook his hand with no ill-will in her eyes. It wasn't the warmth he wanted so desperately, but it wasn't the easier-survived hatred. Maybe it's her sin not to ask questions and force him to confess the power she holds. Maybe it's her sin not to hate him and still let him return to their shared homeland and a war that should have ended a hundred times over.

Still.

It must be his sins that see him shoved roughly to his knees, his sins that have the pistol aimed at his head. The list of charges they read is not nearly so long as Gleb could have written for himself, but it is more than sufficient. He closes his eyes and does not try to force his mouth into his half-forgotten prayers. He does not try to count his sins again. It will not matter for very long.

He muses on forgiveness and cold blue eyes instead.

**Author's Note:**

> If you stuck it out this long, thank you -- the verb tenses gave me a headache and I gave up trying to fix them. I actually wrote this years ago, but in second person. Obviously that needed to be changed before posting.
> 
> As ever, follow my writing tumblr at [vampyrekatwrites](http://vampyrekatwrites.tumblr.com/) for snippets and my Anastasia blog at [nanasalt](http://nanasalt.tumblr.com/) for general nonsense. Feel free to PM me or send asks! I can't always reply to every comment here, but the interaction is what keeps me writing.


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